I have read the posts for Visual Studio 2008being slow in HTML Designer. I even downloaded and installed the patch, to no avail.

I am developing windows forms and my IDE has become so sluggish switching between design and source mode it is seriously impossible to be productive. Visual Studio hangs for a good 10 secondswhile redrawing the screen then sits there frozen for another 5 seconds before letting me take control again. It also does this when coming out of debugging.

I am on a fast dual core machine...

Anyone else experiencing this?

As an update, I found an even better fix so you dont' have to lose any functionality in VS 2008. This also drastically improved performance (response time) for me in SQL server management Studio.

In Internet Explorer 7...

Tools->Internet Options->Advanced->Security Node->Uncheck 'Check for publisher's certificate revocation*'

Once I did this, like magic, VS 2008 works great even with 'Enable the Visual Studio hosting process' checked and SQL Server Management Studio's response time was almost immediate.

It is a good day!

My theory is the corporate networkI am in is blocking certain ports (out of my control), and thus certain 'behind the scenes' requests are timing out, causing the delays.

- Robbie

Yes, this is exactly what I am experiencing... a 16 second delay every time the IDE refreshes and coming out of debug mode (or release mode for that matter)

I too have a dual core 3.0 Ghz machine with 3GB of Ram.

I have applied the hotfix, but it did not fix this problem.

This might help: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2008/02/08/vs-2008-web-development-hot-fix-roll-up-available.aspx

Here is another discussion on the topic: http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=2639661&SiteID=1

Thanks

Dave -

I don't know if this will help, but do you happen to be using any 3rd party controls? After initially fixing the problem, it started happening to me again, but his time it was taking even longer to build (if that's even possible). I happen to be using ComponentOne's controls in my projects, and I upgraded to the new 2008 versions. However what happened was that all of my License.licx files didn't update to reflect the new version that I was using. I had to delete out all of the .licx files, and then let VS auto-regenerate them for me by opening up a form that had the controls on them. After doing this, the build works perfectly.

It may be a long shot, but I hope it helps.

Yes, this is exactly what I am experiencing... a 16 second delay every time the IDE refreshes and coming out of debug mode (or release mode for that matter)

I too have a dual core 3.0 Ghz machine with 3GB of Ram.

I have applied the hotfix, but it did not fix this problem.

This might help: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2008/02/08/vs-2008-web-development-hot-fix-roll-up-available.aspx

Here is another discussion on the topic: http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=2639661&SiteID=1

Thanks

Thank you for the links,

Unfortunately this problem is notstemming fromthe Web Developer in VS 2008.

I am simply creating a C# Console App "Hello World" program, and I stripped it of every reference except for System.

Whenever I hit Debug, the console shows "Hello World" and then returns to the IDE, the IDE freezes for 11 to 17 seconds during which time I cannot type or click anything - incredibly disruptive to productivity.

- This behavior occurs even whenI boot the computer in safe mode, start VS in safe mode, log in under a different user,

and reinstalling Visual Studio.

***I did find2 workarounds to solve the problem, but I dont think it is a fix as I am losing debugfunctionality in the process.

1 You can either run the project using Ctrl+F5 'Start without Debugging'

-or-

2 You can go to project settings, Debug Tab, and uncheck 'Enable the Visual Studio hosting process'

Using option 2, the IDE immediately works great - so I think there isa bug in the VS hosting process, or the way the IDE interacts with the VS hosting process.

- I sure hope they find a fix to this problem, in the meantime I will probably just continue using VS 2005 to avoid the hassles.

My machine specs:

Windows XP Professional, Service Pack 2

Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 @ 3 Ghz

3 GBRAM

- VS 2008 & VS 2005 installed concurrently

I don't seem to have this option. Debugging tab. I feel stupid but can you be more specific? I have looked under project->properties and also tools->options, and I don't see it...I have checked both 2005 and 2008. ???

Ok, no problem, it is the same in both 2005 & 2008. (although i dont have this prob in 2005)

- I am just using a standard C# app, I have not tested this with the other languages.

Load a solution (with at least 1 project in it)

Make sure Solution Explorer is showing (View -> Solution Explorer)

Right click on the Project (not the Solution) and select properties.

You should see the Debug tab now with the 'Enable the Visual Studio hosting process' option.

Of course...I am C++ not C#!

As an update, I found an even better fix so you dont' have to lose any functionality in VS 2008. This also drastically improved performance (response time) for me in SQL server management Studio.

In Internet Explorer 7...

Tools->Internet Options->Advanced->Security Node->Uncheck 'Check for publisher's certificate revocation*'

Once I did this, like magic, VS 2008 works great even with 'Enable the Visual Studio hosting process' checked and SQL Server Management Studio's response time was almost immediate.

It is a good day!

My theory is the corporate networkI am in is blocking certain ports (out of my control), and thus certain 'behind the scenes' requests are timing out, causing the delays.

- Robbie

I wish switching between design and source only took 10 - 15 seconds on my machine, the IDE freezes sometimes over a minute. Try making an adjustment, then another freeze for 30+ seconds. Try using the split display and the IDEcrashes - this new bug courtesy of the "hot fix".

I'm using a dual core, 2 GB 2.4 GHz system.

I only wish MS project planners + developers found fixing bugs as glamorous as adding new worthless features. You'd think that in the five years since the VS2003 release thses kinds of bugs would be fixed. This tool is not usable for any serious development. Project planners beware, if you are planning any new web development projects stay clear away from .NET.

Robbie -

This has been driving me nuts for months! We were testing on a machine that had no internet access and it was taking us 5-10 mins to build our solution (19 projects) and none of the other hot fixes or workarounds helped.Once we turned on internet access it started working, but we weren't sure why. It turns out that we have some 3rd party controls that are digitially signed which was causing the build to hang for so long (couldn't verify). You saved us couple hours of checking for the 'why', but too bad I didn't find this post a month ago. Thanks much!

<sigh />

unfortunately, this did not work for me - nor did the KB946581 Hotfix.

Dave -

I don't know if this will help, but do you happen to be using any 3rd party controls? After initially fixing the problem, it started happening to me again, but his time it was taking even longer to build (if that's even possible). I happen to be using ComponentOne's controls in my projects, and I upgraded to the new 2008 versions. However what happened was that all of my License.licx files didn't update to reflect the new version that I was using. I had to delete out all of the .licx files, and then let VS auto-regenerate them for me by opening up a form that had the controls on them. After doing this, the build works perfectly.

It may be a long shot, but I hope it helps.

Hi Micah,

Thanks for the suggestion. I'm not using any 3rd party controls and checked for any .licx files just in case. The only one I could find was related to the SQL Server 2005 Samples.

<sigh />

You champion. This problem was driving me up the wall. Thanks for posting the solution.

I had similar problems. I had several different solutions that had dlls that were shared. I went through each solution and deleted all my breakpoints. Output window when debugging went from 2+ minutes to 2 milliseconds.

Same exact problem here. VS2008 used to hang for 10 seconds (or more) in lots of situations, making it unusable. I did experience the hangs when coming out of debugging and decided I was not going to use VS2008 until the problem was solved.

Diagnosis:
What placed me on the good track was Robbie's suggestion to uncheck 'Check for publisher's certificate revocation*', this did not solve the problem for me, though.
Disabling all network connection did solve the problem, but it's obviously a very bad workaround, so I've used Netmon3.0 to look behind the scenes.
Turns out that my very simple Windows Forms Application was communicating to some infonotary.com server (a legitimate certification authority). A little more digging in the DNS requests and a few trials with the hosts file and I could find a decent solution.

Workaround (for me!):
I've just added the entry "127.0.0.1 ldap.infonotary.com" to my hosts file (C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts).

Workaround (for other people as well?):
1) use NetMon3 to identify what communication is causing the delay. In my case, the strange communication appears in the "Network Conversations" pane, both under the "My Traffic\devenv.exe" and the "My Traffic\myapp.vshost.exe" (the debugged app) nodes.
2) use NetMon3 again to discover the dns name of the certification authority that VS is interrogating.

[to do so: start debugging your app, open a command prompt and type "ipconfig /flushdns" (needs elevation in Vista), start a capture with netmon, stop debugging, wait few seconds, stop capturing. In netmon, under the "My Traffic\<Uknown>" node, you should see a conversation with one of your DNS servers, whatever matches the ip address identified in 1) is the DNS name you are looking for.]

3) edit your C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts file and add the line 127.0.0.1 %the DNS name from 2%

Explanation:
for some reason, the communication with this particular certification authority from within my corporate network is blocked. The NetMon capture shows three outgoing frames at three seconds interval, but no reply. This explains a 9+ seconds lag in VS.

Disclaimer:
Applying this is at your own risk, effectively you will prevent your PC to communicate with a given certification authority. This is somewhat risky and might prevent other programs and/or websites and/or webservices from working correctly.

Notes:
a) I have absolutely no idea of why VS is trying to contact a certification authority when starting and when running a "Hello world" winform. I've tried to figure out what component is signed with a certificate that validates through infonotary.com but I've failed, if anybody knows how to figure that out please do let us know here, I might be able to figure out a better workaround! I did not install any third prarty components, just VS2005, VS2008 and MS-SourceSafe.
b) For the VS team (hoping they do read these forums): would it be possible to change the way VS checks certificates? To say this politley: it is rather peculiar that VS stops responding when waiting for some network communication to end!

I hope this helps,

Sergio

Wow. I thought you were completely out of your tree when you posted "Uncheck 'Check for publisher's certificate revocation'" but, sure enough: it instantly fixed my problem with VS being all but unusable.

It’s incomprehensible that A. This is a problem at all and B. MS hasn’t fixed it.

Hmmmm, tried the disable services reg edit tweak, the msconfig disable non-microsoft services and startup tasks, the publisher's certificate revocation in IE, with the internet connection off, uninstalling all third party controls and lastly tried installing VS 2010 Beta 1.

All with the same results... About to wipe Windows and reinstall.